Artificial Intelligence Intelligence.

This
article that I found on New
Scientist talks about intelligence gathered by AI software called
KARNAC (Knowledge-
Aided Retrieval iN Activity Context). KARNAC was created by Applied Systems Intelligence, Inc.
KARNAC can sift through data located in a Global Information Base (GIB)
to analyze for patterns of suspicious activity and match on seemingly
unrelated events to predict future terrorist activity. The
article says that if such a system had been in place that possibly both
the Oklahoma bombing and the World Trade Center bombing could have been
predicted. Of course, there are privacy concerns (privacy a
casualty?), but it would be cool if the system could stop terrorists.
Here's a press
release from ASI. This of course is different than the Software intelligence
agents reported about before on robots.net.

I think this technology would be of more general interest if they addressed how to maintain
people's privacy and used for more positive applications such as medical research, trend
identification and tracking, etc.